


The Cornucopia of Sass

by dendrite_blues



Series: Reparations and Related Works [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Absurdist Humor, Comedy, Fluff, Gen, Intersex Jotunn (Marvel), Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Kid Fic, Non-binary Hela, Non-binary pronouns, Parent Loki (Marvel), Parent Tony Stark, Parent-Child Relationship, Parental Guidance - Freeform, Queer Families, Teen Angst, Tony Stark is Good With Kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-07-18 06:47:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16113041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dendrite_blues/pseuds/dendrite_blues
Summary: Connected oneshots following Loki and Tony's questionable but earnest parenting. Turns out there's no guidebook for raising actual monsters.





	1. The Last Rabbit

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everybody! The dynamics of this family come directly from their introduction in my Frostiron fic, [Reparations](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15091862/chapters/34994054). You don't need to read it, but it would be cool if you did. Some stuff is subject to randomly change such as genders because these snippets happen across the timeline, some of which hasn't been written yet. _shrug_ It is what it is.

Very few salesman knock on the door of Tony Stark’s Malibu house. Partly because the gated driveway looks like something out of a black and white horror movie, but mostly because the door itself is glass and not very suitable for knocking. Then again, Scientologists are not normal salespeople.

Predictably, the well dressed spokesperson arrives at the worst possible moment. It’s like a superpower of door-to-door marketing professionals, he swears. So far this morning they have lost the living room curtains to Jori’s fashion designer ambitions, lost the couch to a literal dog fight between Fenrir and Hela, and lost the TV remote because… well because Tony can’t find the damn thing.

He’s bushed by lunchtime, honestly. Loki’s out kissing Fury’s ass for that stunt he pulled in D.C. last week, so there’s no back up to call when Hela and Fen start arguing over the last rabbit in the fridge. He really wants to hide in the workshop and let it happen. Seriously, he’s had it with the hell spawn today. But then the rabbit gets torn in half and the kitchen gets doused like a deleted scene from Cabin in the Woods.

Looks like he’s about to lose yet another shirt to the hazardous waste bin. Closing his eyes against a spray of blood, Tony shoves the two mini-gods apart.

"Drop your rabbits, and put your hands where I can see them." he says in his bad cop voice.

“Ze started it!” Fenrir says, pointing at Hela.

“It was mine, I put my name on it.” Hela sneers, waving around a dripping red piece of paper that was probably once a Post-It note.

“Guys, what did we agree about mammals?” Tony demands.

Fenrir licks a spot of blood off the corner of his lip, and cowers when Tony glares at him.

“Well?” Tony snaps.

“Not in the house.” The two Jotun say in unison. 

“But-” Fen says.

“No buts!” Tony interrupts, massaging his temples, “The house is a viscera-free zone. What do you think this is? Is this viscera-free? Hela, that bit right there, on the coffeemaker what is that?”

“A liver.” Hela mumbles, studying hir shoes in shame.

“Awesome, I always wanted liver flavored coffee. Thank you so much for granting me this life long, repressed desire.” 

The doorbell rings. Everyone scans the splattered cabinets and footprint covered floor, and Tony forgets the rest of his lecture. The door rings again. Knowing what he’s about to see, he looks down at his clothes and finds incriminating stains in very noticeable places.

“Jori, buddy, get the door.” he calls.

The skinny little biter looks up from his blocks in the living room. Without a word he puts on his human glamour and pads to the entry hall. Raising his finger to his lips, Tony shushes the two older godlings with a stern glare. The door opens.

“Good afternoon-” a perky male voice says, “Oh, hello there.”

“Hi.” Jori says.

“Are your parents home?”

Jori thinks about it, turning around. Tony shakes his head. 

“No.” Jori lies easily. His father would be proud.

“Are you home alone?” the man asks, clearly concerned.

Jori thinks about it. He looks at Tony again and says. “No.”

An awkward pause.

“Can I talk to… whoever is watching you?”

“And what the hell do you want with ‘em?“ Jori asks in his squeaky kid voice.

Tony almost loses it. Almost. Fenrir covers his mouth to hold back his own laugh, and Hela smirks. Abruptly, ze lets go of hir half of the rabbit and dons hir own glamour. Walking gracefully to the door, still covered in blood, ze calls.

“Jori, what did dad tell you about manners? Ask nicely.”

The man gasps audibly, and Hela puts hir hand on Jori’s shoulder.

Jori sighs and asks again in an annoyed tone. “And what the hell do you want with ‘em,  _sir_?”

Tony almost hyperventilates. Only the sickening smell of dead animal keeps his breathing in check.

“I’ll come back at another time.” the man hedges.

“Nonsense!” Hela says cheerfully, “Is that a pamphlet? Please come in, we’d love to hear about your organization.”

Tony's a terrible role model, because all he feels when the man runs away screaming is pride.


	2. Hela's Big Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After scaring Loki and Tony half to death, Hela has to face the music, i.e. Tony's questionable dating advice.

Tony knows he and Hela need to have a talk, and that this is the perfect opportunity, but he really doesn’t want to. The obligatory message of parental disapproval is going to be the height of hypocrisy coming from him. Unfortunately Loki’s busy punching his feelings away in the home gym so there isn’t really another option.

Ze’s on the couch, zoning out under a heated blanket and groaning at regular intervals. Evidently the hangover from drinking the Cathbad’s entire liquor stash isn’t treating hir too well. Sitting next to hir, he flicks absently through one of the paperbacks he became shamefully fond of in prison, and mulls over what to say. The latest trade dispute blares on the holo—some kind of miscommunication between Mars and the Lunar Colony, it all blends together after a time—and he decides he doesn’t care to wait hir out.

“Just so we’re clear, I’m not mad about the sex. I’m mad about the lying.”

Hela groans. Something along the lines of _not a kid._ Which is true enough, considering the circumstances.

“Honestly, I think it’s great.” Tony shrugs, sipping his caff and staring at the bland news report. “You gotta learn what you like, you know? Play the field. Spread your wild oats.”

“Tony, please—” Hela hides hir face in the couch.

“I’m sure they’re both very nice girls.” he says, smirking as he puts down his mug. Ze glares at him and he raises his eyebrows. “Seriously, sunshine, good for you. But as a step-dad and an American I’m required to tell you that sex is bad, and if you do it again you will get herpes and die.”

“Stop—” Hela’s voice is gruff and muffled by the cushions. Hir neck is bright purple.

“Look, I get it, I was a player in my day. But you have to be smart about it, okay? You can’t just go around snogging your friend’s sisters.”

“It wasn’t like that.” ze growls, sitting up.

“I’m just saying there are advantages to monogamy. You can put on a couple pounds and still get laid. Unless its an anniversary you don't have to buy ‘em dinner first. And don’t tell your dad I said this but—” he leans in and whispers behind his hand. “No condoms.”

Hela throws a pillow at his head.

“I’m just saying—” he says defensively.

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Like what?”

“Casual.”

How a kid Hela’s age ends up in an un-casual threesome is beyond him.

“Ok, let’s start at the beginning. Who’s this Olyvea girl?”

“Nessa’s PMX.” Hela says, matter of fact. And sighs at his lack of comprehension. “Pretty much exclusive.”

“And you got involved...how?"

“Nessa texts me all the time, saying she wants to dump Olyvea and stuff,” Hela sniffs, picking at hir nails. “But she never does, even though we're like, totally made for each other. And she says she really wants to be with me. And, I mean, Olyvea's not _ugly_ or anything, and she's kind of funny I guess...”

“So you thought you three could go all Sister Wives and everything would be cool?”

“Well...yeah.” Hela blinks at him like ze really thought it would work. Like ze's honestly surprised Olyvea lost her shit and ratted them out to Loki at 3 AM.

Sometimes the Jotun get the best of both genders, so to speak. Physical strength and social grace. Masculine reserve and feminine wiles. Other times it’s like they're double cursed. Simultaneously horny and insecure, desperate for affection and emotionally constipated. He almost palms his face at the naivety.

Hela's schoolyard crush with the Loch Ness monster was cute at first, something to gently poke fun about at the dinner table. But now that ze and the Scottish transfer ~~slut~~ student are in the same class he barely recognises his own kid. All the black and purple disappeared at the start of term, and in their place came pink lip gloss, kitten heels, and tiny miniskirts.

Obviously Hela’s allowed to be whatever ze wants, but the overnight transformation felt like a red flag. He and Loki had argued about it but neither of them had the balls to follow through when the hero worship morphed into all encompassing head-over-heels-hearts-on-hir-notepad-friendship-bracelets-5ever infatuation. In retrospect he really should have stuck to his guns.

Clapping Hela on the back, he decides to take pity on hir. Clearly ze needs a teacher. A guide on the Path of Infinite Pussy. As a former playboy himself, it’s his privilege, nay, his responsibility, to teach the time-honored techniques. _Always two there are_ , he thinks somberly, looking deep into hir eyes, _a master and an apprentice._

Hela stares at him like he’s lost his marbles.

Slowly, he raises his free hand in the air like a prophet delivering a gospel.

“Ok, I think it's time you learned the truth about women. Listen close, young buck, I'm about to change your life."

"This is going to be sexist, isn't it?"

"No! Well...alright it's a little sexist. But it's also true, so don't knock it. Actual reality is this; girls want a man that can protect them. Love and respect are nice, and looks do matter, but if those were the only criteria then you wouldn’t see all these badass beautiful women hanging from wrinkly, gross, politician’s arms.

What a girl really wants, before everything else, is someone that makes her feel safe. She wants to know you’re strong, you’re connected, and you’ve got your shit together. Because when the bad guys come to rough you up, she needs to know that you have her back and you’re gonna take care of her.

You think all those nice guys that hold open doors and wear WWJD bracelets know how to deck someone? They're good guys, and if shit were fair they would get all the hot girls. But if you put one of them next to Franky Four-Fingers, the biker at the dive bar drinking Dos Equis, you better believe eight out of ten women are gonna choose Frankenstein.

So you see the problem here, right? Nessa's got a girl that’s loyal, decently attractive, and who _lets her fuck other girls right in front of her_. That’s like, the definition of security. Olyvea could develop warts on her eyeballs and Nessa wouldn’t leave. She already has her ride-or-die girl. You can’t compete with that.”

“But we’re in love.” Hela insists. Tony winces, squeezing hir shoulder.

“No, sunshine, _you’re_ in love. She wants a side piece.”

“She doesn’t even _like_ Olyvea.”

“She didn’t leave her for you, did she? Nessa's a player, and she’s fucking with your head. All this,” he motions to Hela’s smeared mascara and strappy white dress. “This isn’t you. You are a fucking ten out of ten, and there’s someone out there who is gonna love every bit of you. Exactly as you are.”

“Of course you think so, you’re normal.” ze sneers.

Tony’s stomach clenches at the conviction in hir voice. He angles so he can see hir face better and speaks with as much reassuring sincerity as he can muster.

“Kid, if I learned anything in prison, it’s that humans will fuck anything.”

A hint of a smile quirks on Hela’s lip, so he elbows hir in the side and presses on.

“Have you ever noticed that in fantasy movies they call them ‘half-elves’ or ‘half-orcs’ or whatever? They never say the other half, it’s just assumed to be human. You know why? Because we are a sick, twisted race of perverts and everyone knows it. Just wait, in a few hundred years everybody’s gonna be half alien or sea monster or something. Us humans, we can’t keep it in our pants.”

“Really?” ze asks, smiling hopefully.

“Really.”

He pulls Hela into a hug and ze leans into his side, watching the muted holovision. As the morning news turns into whacky Martian variety shows he settles in and grabs the tissue box from the coffee table. Hela snags a handful, huddling under the blanket and wiping at hir smudgy eyes.

“I’m shocked you didn’t make some kind of ‘fish in the sea’ pun.” ze mumbles, leaning into his side.

“Oh I thought about it, but I bravely resisted. You may submit your compliments to the suggestion box at your earliest convenience.”

He shakes the tissue box in hir face, lip twitching as he struggles not to crack. Sticking hir nose in the air, Hela shoves the soiled wads back in with a snooty expression and he breaks, chuckling at the same time ze does. They settle into a comfortable silence as the lack of sleep and the hypnotic nonsense of daytime television do their work.

Fen and Jori erupt out of their rooms like twin cannon balls two episodes later, and Tony considers the look of agony on Hela’s face divine justice. Aspirin doesn’t work on Jotun thanks to their ridiculous immune systems, so all ze can do is lay there and suffer while nature runs its course.

His joints pop unpleasantly when he gets up to make breakfast, the room artificially cold compared to the pulsing warmth of the blanket. He ruffles Hela’s frizzy hair on his way up and smirks.

“But seriously Slayer, two girls on your first night?”

Hela turns bright purple from hir neck to hir hairline.  He wipes a fake tear from his eye.

“My baby’s got game.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _seriously don't listen to Tony this is terrible advice._


	3. Tea for Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the kids act like adults and the adults act like kids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you [Raven_Ehtar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raven_Ehtar/pseuds/Raven_Ehtar) and [Wolfloner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolfloner/pseuds/Wolfloner) for beta reading. If there are still mistakes it's completely my own doing. hehe

How Loki and Stark can stand to live in this absolute bore of a house Valkyrie may never know. It’s all white and chrome and nothing breakable below the two meter mark, and where’s the fun in that? When she was a girl, breaking every item of value within a league of the barracks was a collective crusade. Compared to that, Loki’s sheltered babes will never know true joy.

She finds herself here on a mission she can only qualify as dubiously wise, on account of several criteria. For one, she is seeking advice from Loki and Tony Stark. Always a questionable decision. For two, she is asking for  _ relationship _ advice. The fact that she’s inquiring about her own romantic travesty ought to make the answer immediately obvious. She is involved in the tryst and therefore it is categorically a dreadful endeavor which any wiser soul would terminate as soon as possible. But she hasn’t. Not yet. Without someone striking the flint she can’t make herself burn the bridge.

When she left her dwelling this morning she’d intended to open up her shoppe or perhaps pop in on the guard stations for a surprise inspection. But instead she’s found herself here, listening to Stark and Loki do….whatever they’re doing.  _ Caterwauling, _ the barracks elders would have called it.

A staggering crash booms from the upper floor of the house, like a bookcase falling or a great boar charging into a wall, but none of the room’s other inhabitants give any indication that they heard it. Not Fenrir, engrossed in his video game or Hela sifting flour into a standing mixer in the kitchen, or J o rmungand authoring a melodramatic spectacle with her dolls. 

Only Valkyrie twitches at the startling noise, and only she pivots her head when Loki materializes out of nowhere, hanging from the chandelier and panting from exertion. 

“Hádegi, Brunnhilde. When did you get here?”

The use of her proper name sets her teeth to grinding, but she trims the urge to bicker like an unruly weed. The sod would love nothing more than to annoy her out of his house with his words alone.

“Twenty minutes,” she says instead, crossing her arms. “You let me in yourself, you toss.”

Stark’s muffled shouting emanates from the ceiling. 

“I did?” Loki’s spins a red capped test tube in his free hand. “Goodness, where are my manners. Please help yourself to some coffee. There’s gingersnaps in the pantry.”

Thudding footsteps beat down the upstairs hallway and shortly after take on the distinct rhythm of stairs.

“I see you’re all adjusting well,” she remarks. The shouting becomes more distinct as Stark draws closer. Loki soundlessly mouths the words in such perfect sync that Valkyrie worries he’s been hexed.

“Loki, you bring that back right now, or I swear to god–”

He reaches the landing of the spiral staircase and stops mid sentence. Loki offers a wiggly-fingered wave.

“Oh, hey, Valk,” Stark shoots a quick smile in greeting, and then returns to frowning at his fianc é . “Slugger, gimme the sample. I’m gonna be late.”

Loki raises his brows, his lips spreading in a dark leer.

“Babe, please–”

With a flash of fiendfyre Loki disappears. Although she’s never been one for dramatics, Valkyrie can’t deny that the smoke dissipating in the shape of screaming, elongated skulls is a stylish touch.

“Goddamnit!”

“Swear jar,” the kids say monotonously.

“Shit, sorry.” Stark says, and then slaps his face when he realizes that was also a swear.

Two ka-ching noises sound from the ceiling and a mournful tune plays as a hologram on the wall lowers the level of an already mostly-empty meter. There are columns on it for each member of the house, and only Jori challenges Stark for the lowest rank.

“I would love to see them implement that in prison,” he grumbles, throwing a hefty cloak over his shoulders and stomping toward the wall of glass doors on the other end of the living room. Several yards away, Loki stands in the snow tossing the vial up and down in his hand. 

“Sorry about this,” he sighs, shoving a door at random open with a crunch of iced over hinges. A gust of frigid air blows in through the crack and Valkyrie shivers.

“Right broken in the brain, he is,” she replies.

“Yeah,” Stark says. His tone approaches beleaguered, but his lips spread in a hopelessly fond smile Valkyrie fears she’ll wear some day. The door closes with a muttered “fork” and the glassy smack of a snowball on the window.

“I’m going to be waiting an age, aren’t I?” she asks no one in particular. 

Hela hums a yes from the kitchen, and Valkyrie drops her head back on the couch. The ceiling is a curved mass of blank whiteness. Horrid. What kind of prince lives in a blank canvas of a house without so much as a family mural?

She misses the intensity of Sakaar, and as the years have gone by she’s even come to miss Asgard’s unyielding resplendence. Too little too late. Loki does not appear to miss anything but causing mayhem. She should be so lucky.

Another fistful of snow slams into the window and Loki squawks like a startled housecat. She sighs, her eyes sliding to the cheerful videographs framed on bookshelves and the wall rack full of coats and silly human hats with fluffy pom-poms on top. This is Loki’s home now, just a surely as the austerely refurbished storage container is hers, but he seems so much more suited to it all. A human job, a human house, a human lover who dresses him up in joyless human suits.

She cannot picture herself in a house like this with Natasha, although she wishes she could. They meet each other in bars and around back alleys. On accident, but occasionally on something much less serendipitous. Never  _ planned, _ Norns forbid it, but certainly done with an idea of how the events will flow. Of how their eyes will meet as Natasha arms her wheelchair past the tavern at dusk. Of how Valkyrie will concoct some matter to discuss, which will turn into another and another and another. 

And since they are both determined to deny forethought, then at the end of the night the discovery that Natasha is staying on Valkyrie’s side of town will be described as a coincidence. Accidental, of course. it could only be an accident that Natasha’s accommodations always seem to fall within strolling radius of Valkyrie’s shoppe.

But when they are collapsing onto the bar in the middle hours of the night, when they are trading wrong-side-of-the-law stories and scratching their names into the soggy labels of empty beer bottles, her shrively wrung-out heart starts whinging and wailing all the same. 

Furtive and free of accountability is how they have conducted themselves for years and years, and so the only way she can place Natasha in a house like this is if she is leaving treadmarks on the carpet and washing her bloody hands off in the sink. She cannot imagine either of them attending open houses or planning renovations. Beside which, Natasha is not a young human. She will pass so quickly it will feel like a moment’s daydream. 

Yes, there are so many excellent reasons she cannot have what Loki does, and yet here she is. For what purpose? To hear what she already knows? Foolish, pure unbridled stupidity. Stark barks a boisterous laugh and she sighs through her nose.

“I should be going,” she says.

“Already?” Hela turns. Scowls. “Hang on, I’ll get them. They’re being really rude.”

“It’s no bother,” Valkyrie starts to stand, but Hela shadow-steps to her side and urges her back.

“It’ll just be a sec. Really.”

The next instant ze phases outdoors, eating quite a bit of friendly fire in the process. Valkyrie waffles between skipping town and abandoning the planet all-together. Hela is not an enemy one makes lightly.

Outside the three members of the household most resembling adults dart and dash around like children while the children laze around in the living room like weary adults. Sitting just inside her coin purse is a holophone, she can call for a hovershare. It would take some time to arrive, but there are still options available to her. Options which would protect her dignity. 

If Hela orchestrates a truce before her ride arrives she can invent a minor problem or perhaps give Loki some scandalous gossip to chew on. She can discuss new products for the shoppe, given that these two are her most loyal customers by orders of magnitude. And if the hover arrives in time she can easily slip out—

A small hand tugs on her slacks and ends her wayward strategizing. Jormungand stands at her feet, bouncing slightly on her toes with enough force that the heels light up in alternating blinks of pink and purple. She holds a plastic tea cup the size of a walnut between her thumb and forefinger, her other hand poised under the cup as if to catch wayward drips.

“Tea?” she says, breathing loudly through her mouth as younglings often do. Someone has wrestled her corkscrew hair into pigtails and Valkyrie can’t decide which of the available adults would be the more absurd hairdressing candidate. At something of a loss, she accepts the minuscule cup with two hands.

“Careful, it’s hot,” Jori says.

“Oh...thank you,” Valkyrie adjusts her hand so she isn’t touching the base of the cup. The child nods, and sits on the sofa beside her.

“You’re welcome.”

“What’s this for?”

Jori kicks her feet idly and sits on her hands. “It’s a cup of calm the fuck down.”

More money noises sound from the ceiling, and the swear jar screen makes another transaction. Evidently the exchange rate for “fuck” is a good deal more punishing than the words Stark used earlier. Valkyries eyebrows raise and across the room, slouching on the loveseat with his headphones falling off his ears, Fenrir snorts.

“Don’t let Dad hear you say that.”

Valkyrie would bet the kid  _ learned _ that particular phrase from Dad, whichever one he means. Jori tuts and shakes her head in an uncanny imitation of Loki’s come-off-it face. Her attention returns to Valkyrie and she pats her little hand on her knee.

“It’s okay, you can tell us. We won’t be mad,” she says with a solicitous expression.

“Why would you be?” Valkyrie blurts. Jori shakes her head and crosses her arms, her brows lowering in a stern stare.

“Ok, little one, out with it,” Jori continues. Clearly mimicking Stark. “Tell us what happened. From the beggen-ing.”

“The beggen-ing?”

“Beginning.” Fenrir grumbles, hammering hard on the controller buttons and hissing when his avatar explodes on screen. He slides off his headphones and throws the controller on the ample ottoman in front of the loveseat. “Geez, did you get dumped or something? You look awful.”

The urge to toss the toy mug is strong, but Jori’s small hand on her hip stays her hand.

“I did not get dumped.”

“By Auntie Nat?” Fenrir crawls up to lay on the rounded arm of the loveseat.   


“Who told you that?” Valkyrie snaps before she can stop herself. Her face hardens into a grimace that sends Fenrir back to hiding behind the armrest.

“No one!”

“Uncle Thor!” Jori shrieks at the same time. Somewhere across town, the once and future king must feel a burning in his boots for she is thinking very unkind thoughts about him.

“Is it true?” Fenrir perks up, and even in his current form she can imagine his wolf ears twitching in curiosity.

“No!” she groans, and then recalls the real cause of her visit. The drunk kiss that never should have been, under the flickering light of the tavern’s back door. Cold in the seemingly eternal northern snow and witnessed by the skittering city rats. At first rushed, hyperventilated and uncoordinated as a fall down a flight of stairs, until Natasha caught her inches from the crash and did everything over in silky smooth slow-motion. Jori kicks the sofa again, and she covers her face in her hand. “Alright, yeah. Yeah, with Nat.”

“Are you in love?” Jori gasps. “Like Eric and Ariel?”

She isn’t sure how to answer. The names are foreign to her, the concept of “love” even moreso. Her first and only encounter with it happened when she was little more than a child herself.

She wonders about the parameters of love, as these seedlings understand it. A single sloppy kiss and half a decade of suggestive conversation surely do not fall within them. Thankfully neither of the younglings seem to require an answer.

“Are you getting married?” Fenrir asks.

“First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes–” Jori chants.

“No! No more babies! It’s bad enough we’re getting one.”

Jori’s face scrunches up, and when she wears that face tears are seldom far behind.

“I can promise no babies,” Valkyrie rushes to interject, unsure why she is even discussing her love life with a couple of hoydens. “We aren’t even properly together.”

“Oh thank  Höðr,” Fenrir rolls his eyes.   


“Why not?” Jori stands on the couch, both hands gripping Valkyrie’s shirt.

“Yeah, why not?”

They look so deeply concerned that Valkyrie unwittingly feels touched. Frowning for a flicker, she sets the tiny teacup on the coffee table and leans on her elbows. There were many and sundry reasons she and Natasha have so-far avoided anything resembling a point of no return. None she could rightly explain to children, though.

“Because…” she trails off. Why, though? Really? Because their love would be short lived? Because neither of them have whole hearts left to give? “I’m not sure.”

“Do you like hanging out?” Fenrir demands, climbing back over the armrest and stroking his chin like a wise old sage. Valkyrie blinks.

“Of course.”

Jori purses her lips in deep thought. “Do you hug each other lots and lots?

That question is a good bit more complicated, but Valkyrie can understand the spirit of it. She and Natasha certainly don’t go about hanging off one another. Or really even touching publicly. But there are brushes of fingers, there are heated gazes and a feeling in her chest like a tightly wound knot. Yes, were she certain of her welcome, she would hug Natasha. Lots and lots. The gazes of the younglings have her crossing her ankles to stop her toes tapping.

“Ah, I suppose we do, yeah.”

“And kiss each other goodnight?” Jori bounces on the cushion. Valkyrie worries about what kind of holo shows they’ve been showing her. She’ll be a right matchmaker at this rate.

“...Possibly,” she says, cautious more out of deference to age appropriateness than real hesitation.

Fenrir rubs at his nose and looks out the window. It’s just a flurry of white being thrown back and forth, nothing but blurs of dark clothing obscured by the crossfire. With a world-weary sigh he climbs the rest of the way up the couch arm and sits cross-legged on top with his head resting on his closed fists.

“Sounds like you’re dating to me,” he shrugs. “I dunno what your problem is.”

“Shhhh, meanie!” Jori says, tossing her head in a snooty dismissal and retrieving Valkyrie’s abandoned cup and pushing it back in her hand. “Fen’s a poopie head.”

With a deep groan Fenrir abandons the couch in favor of sticking his fingers in Hela’s bowl of half-made cookie dough. At a loss for any other response, Valkyrie pretends to sip her “tea” and thinks. The haze of snow outside settles and three figures trudge back up the hill. Tony leads the procession, stolen vial in hand and a satisfied expression on his face. The door swings open too fast as the wind jerks it out of his hand.

“Ok, sorry! Sorry about that, what did I miss?”

Hela shakes hirself and a good half mark of snow dusts the floor. Beside hir, Loki flares into a cloud of steam and emerges dry but frizzy headed. Valkyrie glances at the toy in her hand and finds her opinion strangely settled.

“Naught at all,” she says, tipping back the empty cup and setting it delicately on the coffee table. She pats Jori on the shoulder and brushes off her pants as she stands. “Just popping in for a visit.”

“So soon?” Loki asks, head tipped in doubt. His face is inky purple from the wind and the mischief, Tony’s hand coming thoughtlessly to rest on his lower back. Envy rolls through her like a fog at sea and the tender resolve growing in her heart sharpens to a slightly harder edge.

“Think I got what I came for. And there’s someone else I wish to visit today, wouldn’t want to miss them,” Valkyrie salutes Fenrir, smirking as he hurries to swallow a large dollop of dough before his parents notice. “Thanks for the advice, mates. Take care.”

If she calls the hover now, she can make it to the tavern by sunset.


End file.
